By this time the 28th had been posted for an hour or more; time enough to give the main body of the reserve a start of four miles. General Paget consulted his watch, returned it to his fob, and ordered the guns to be horsed again. As the artillerymen led their horses forward, he turned to the infantry, eyed their chapfallen faces, and composedly took snuff. "Twenty-eighth, if you don't get fighting enough it's not my fault." This was all he said, but it went to the men's hearts. "You'll give us another chance, Sir?" answered one or two. He had given them back already some of their old self-esteem, and if they were disappointed of a scrimmage, so was he. But it would never do, since the French shirked a direct attack, to linger and be turned in flank by the numbers crossing the fords. So, having horsed his guns and sent them forward to overtake the reserve, Paget ordered the 28th to quit their position and resume the march. No sooner were they in motion than the enemy's leading column began to pour across the bridge; its light companies, falling in with the scattered troops from the fords, pressed down upon the British rear; and the 28th took up once more the Parthian game in which they were growing expert. For three miles along the climbing road they marched, faced about for a skirmish, drove back their pursuers, and marched forward again, always in good order; the enemy being encumbered by its cavalry, which, useless from the first in this rough and wavering track, at length became an impediment and a serious peril. It was by fairly stampeding a troop back upon the foot-soldiers following that the British in the end checked the immediate danger, and, hurrying forward unmolested for a couple of miles, gained a new position in which they could not easily be assailed. The road here wound between a line of cliffs and a precipice giving a sheer drop into the ravine; and here, without need of flankers or, indeed, possibility of using them, the rearmost (light) company, halted for a while and faced about. This brought their right shoulders round to the precipice, at the foot of which, and close upon three hundred feet below, a narrow plateau (or so it seemed) curved around the rock-face. The French, held at check, and once more declining a frontal attack, detached a body of cavalry and voltigeurs to follow this path in the hope of turning one flank. But a week's snow had smoothed over the true contour of the valley, and this apparent plateau proved to be but a gorge piled to its brim with drifts, in which men and horses plunged and sank until, repenting, they had much ado to extricate themselves. On the ledge over their heads a young subaltern of the 28th--the same that Paget had sent to count the numbers crossing the fords--was looking down and laughing, when a pompous voice at his elbow inquired-- "Pray, Sir, where is General Paget?"